IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bar/bedcje/2011256.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Deciding the sale of a life policy in the viatical market: Implications on individual welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Mar Jori
  • Antonio Alegre
  • Carmen Ribas

    (Universitat de Barcelona)

Abstract

In this paper, we present an economic model that allows a terminally ill policy-holder to decide whether or not to sell (part of) the policy in the viatical settlement market. The viatical settlement market emerged in the late 1980s in response to the AIDS epidemic. Nowadays it is part of the large US market in life settlements. The policies traded in the viatical market are those of terminally ill policyholders expected to die within the next two years. The model is discrete and considers only the next two periods (years), since this is the max- imum remaining lifetime of the policyholder. The decisor has an initial wealth and has to share it between his own consumption and the bequests left to his heirs. We rst introduce the expected utility function of our decisor and then use dynamic programming to deduce the strategy that gives higher utility (not selling/selling (part of) the policy at time zero/selling (part of) the policy at time one). The optima depends on the value of the viaticated policy and on some personal parameters of the individual. We nd an analitical expression for the optimal strategy and perform a sensitivity analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Mar Jori & Antonio Alegre & Carmen Ribas, 2011. "Deciding the sale of a life policy in the viatical market: Implications on individual welfare," Working Papers in Economics 256, Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia.
    • Handle: RePEc:bar:bedcje:2011256
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ere.ub.es/dtreball/E11256.rdf/at_download/file
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jay Bhattacharya & Dana Goldman & Neeraj Sood, 2004. "Price Regulation in Secondary Insurance Markets," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 71(4), pages 643-675, December.
    2. Hanming Fang & Edward Kung, 2010. "How Does Life Settlement Affect the Primary Life Insurance Market?," NBER Working Papers 15761, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Neeraj Sood & Abby Alpert & Jay Bhattacharya, 2005. "Technology, Monopoly, and the Decline of the Viatical Settlements Industry," NBER Working Papers 11164, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin Eling & David Pankoke, 2016. "Costs and Benefits of Financial Regulation: An Empirical Assessment for Insurance Companies," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 41(4), pages 529-554, October.
    2. Hanming Fang & Edward Kung, 2021. "Why do life insurance policyholders lapse? The roles of income, health, and bequest motive shocks," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(4), pages 937-970, December.
    3. James M. Carson & Cameron M. Ellis & Robert E. Hoyt & Krzysztof Ostaszewski, 2020. "Sunk Costs and Screening: Two‐Part Tariffs in Life Insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 87(3), pages 689-718, September.
    4. Juan Pablo Atal & Hanming Fang & Martin Karlsson & Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2019. "Exit, Voice, or Loyalty? An Investigation Into Mandated Portability of Front‐Loaded Private Health Plans," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 86(3), pages 697-727, September.
    5. Nadine Gatzert & Gudrun Hoermann & Hato Schmeiser, 2009. "The Impact of the Secondary Market on Life Insurers’ Surrender Profits," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(4), pages 887-908, December.
    6. Alexander Braun & Sarah Affolter & Hato Schmeiser, 2016. "Life Settlement Funds: Current Valuation Practices and Areas for Improvement," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 19(2), pages 173-195, September.
    7. Fang, Hanming & Wu, Zenan, 2020. "Life insurance and life settlement markets with overconfident policyholders," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    8. Fang, H., 2016. "Insurance Markets for the Elderly," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 237-309, Elsevier.
    9. Carmelo Giaccotto & Joseph Golec & Bryan P. Schmutz, 2017. "Measuring the Performance of the Secondary Market for Life Insurance Policies," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 84(1), pages 127-151, March.
    10. Pashchenko, Svetlana & Porapakkarm, Ponpoje, 2015. "Welfare costs of reclassification risk in the health insurance market," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 21-44.
    11. Nadine Gatzert, 2010. "The Secondary Market for Life Insurance in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States: Comparison and Overview," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 13(2), pages 279-301, September.
    12. Seog, S. Hun & Hong, Jimin, 2019. "The efficiency effects of life settlement on the life insurance market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 395-412.
    13. Daniel Gottlieb & Kent Smetters, 2012. "Narrow Framing and Life Insurance," NBER Working Papers 18601, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Yoshizawa, Takuya, 2014. "Characteristics of insurance contracts suitable to benefit value insurance settlements," 商学討究 (Shogaku Tokyu), Otaru University of Commerce, vol. 64(4), pages 235-255.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bar:bedcje:2011256. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Espai de Recerca en Economia (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feubaes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.